The French anarchist arrested for shooting a newspaper photographer fled to Britain to work as an office manger in Essex after serving time for supplying a weapon to France's infamous 'Bonnie and Clyde' murderers.

French Algerian extremist Abedlhakim Dekhar, 48, is currently in custody after allegedly wounding a press photographer with a shotgun on Monday morning.

He fled to England in 1999 to escape surveillance by French authorities after serving four years for helping revolutionaries Florence Rey and Audry Maupin murder three policemen and a taxi driver.

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Assaulted ex-partner: Paris 'shotgun shooter' Abdelhakim Dekhar, seen here on CCTV at the Concorde underground station, was convicted of domestic violence in Britain before returning to France

Dekhar worked in London and married a
student in Redbridge in 2000, listing his address as a small flat close
to Ilford Methodist Church.

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He continued to live in England, where he also worked in a restaurant until July this year.

His sister Farida Dekhar-Powell still lives in the Essex commuter town of Shenfield and teaches French.

She said: ‘I stopped talking to him 20 years ago. He is not part of my life and that's how it stays.’

Dekhar
was arrested in an underground car park on Wednesday night after taking
an overdose of sleeping in Bois-Colombes, a Paris suburb.

Address: The block of flats in Ilford, Essex, where Dekhar is listed as having lived between 2000 and 2003

Accomplice: Dekhar was jailed for four years for supplying a gun to France's infamous 'Bonnie and Clyde' murderers Florence Rey, left and Audry Maupin, right, who
murdered three policemen and a taxi driver

It
was the dramatic end to a manhunt that started on Monday morning when
Dekhar critically wounded a photographer at the offices of Liberation
newspaper in Paris.

He then
opened fire on the offices of the Societe Generale bank in La Defense
business district of Paris, before briefly taking a motorist hostage.

Dekhar's DNA matched genetic prints found on the shotgun cartridges the gunman used and the car he commandeered.

Police
found letters written by Dekhar which referred to Islamism and
conflict-ravaged Arab countries including Libya and Syria.